Ota Matsushita
"I have to find her. She's more important than any of you understand. But you'll see! You'll hear her music, just like I did! Then you'll see!" —Ota Matsushita, on To-Witter Ota Matsushita (真津下 おうた, Matsushita Outa), known online as Mato, is a character featured in A-set's Youtube channel(s) and in ''AI: The Somnium Files''. On Twitter/To-Witter, his account is @Ota_Matsushita. He's a self-declared freelance adult novelist and a close friend of Iris Sagan, and, in turn, an avid fan of her idol personality A-set. Story Early Life Ota was born to Mayumi Matsushita approximately 18 years ago, living at the Matsushita Diner for his whole life. As he got older, he gained an interest in animated programing, video games, and sentai shows. At some point, he began working on a Light Novel story of his own, but whether it is officially published or simply a doujin is unknown. Some time in the past, Ota met Iris Sagan and Mizuki, and as their friendships grew, he began to grow feelings for Iris. The two of them spend a lot of time together hanging out, either shopping or at each other's houses. Once she started her net idol career as A-set and her videos on her Lemniscate channel, Ota was one of her biggest supporters. A-set's Career Once Iris had began her career as A-set, in anticipation for Valentine's Day, Ota made a long and heartfelt poem addressed to her, which he sent as a response to her over To-Witter. This, however, backfired on him as he was ridiculed by the responses of other To-Witter users. A-set invited Ota to help film her Valentine's themed video at the Sunfish Pocket, titled "Tesa Visits Maid Cafe Sunfish Pocket!" There, she read his poem out loud to her entire audience, to which at the end she responded with "This is creepy!" and proceeded to dismiss any romantic advances from Ota, much to his dismay. Ota ultimately spends his Valentine's Day alone watching anime at home, although he at least receives a new-found meme from Iris based on his appearance on her video. Over the weekend, Ota attempts to find ways to meet up with Iris or spend some time with her, such as via online multiplayer in their video games. On one of her tweets about urbex, Ota suggests to go with her on her expeditions for her videos, but she goes alone the day before her upload in order to record her video. Worried about her, Ota attempts to contact her during this time, but fails to reach her while she's exploring, making him nervous the next morning about her whereabouts. Once her urbex video is released, a distortion is caused in the video with an ominous message inscribed within, which causes Ota to worry even more about Iris's wellbeing, ultimately confirming her safety. The day after, Ota and Iris go on a trip to Akihabara to relax over the previous day's scare. There, Ota finds some erotic doujins of interest, which he purchases and spends the next night..... busy with them. Over the weekend, he spends some time working on his light novel series. On the next week, Iris and Mizuki visit Ota at his home, spending the day together. Ota and Mizuki go out to buy snacks while Iris films her next video at the diner. Once the video is uploaded a few days later, another distortion to the video occurs, which scares Ota and Iris even more, prompting the former to rush over to the latter's home out of worry. While consoling her, Ota comes to the conclusion that these occurrences are a prank orchestrated by A-set's haters, convincing Iris that these are simply harmless pranks. For the next few days, Ota tries to get in with Iris's and Mizuki's lunchtime (to no avail) and debating online with people about what he considers accusations and conspiracy theories about his relationship with Iris. During this time, Ota commissions the To-Witter user @fluerichaji to make fan art of A-set wearing a Sunfish Pocket mer-maid uniform, which he eventually makes his new banner on his profile. Soon after, A-set uploads her next video, this one with even more distortion and glitches, to which Ota attempts to help in solving, to no avail. A few days later, on International Women's Day, Ota spends all night long playing Nier:Automata, waking up late the next morning as a result. Eventually he helps Iris back up all of her videos in order to prevent any more hacks or deletions from outside sources. On the day Iris is set to fly to San Francisco, he spends his night making discussions on To-Witter about the sexiest female character themes. Iris's Death The day after, a strange video is uploaded to A-set's channel, titled 6, in which her empty home is filmed by a camera. Extremely worried about this strange upload, Ota attempts to make contact with Iris via calls, To-Witter, and NILE, but none work. With this radio silence, Ota begins looking for information about what happened to Iris, contacting her mother to learn that she left for the airport, but later communicating with the airline and the staff at the hotel that she never arrived at either destination, making him worried that Iris may have gone missing. He begins digging deeper, determining that Iris is still in Tokyo, and reminds his followers about his infatuation with her. Using wifi towers, Ota is able to determine that Iris's cellphone is being connected somewhere near the water, presumably around Ariake, and he finds a strange message hidden in code that reads CRAMER DIAVOLO. When he reports this on To-Witter, several followers come to the conclusion that this phrase is connected to Lemniscate in intriguing ways, which makes Ota panic at the thought. With more searching, Ota learns that every time he encounters the phrase CRAMER DIAVOLO, it's always accompanied by a string of code: "59112518581132 57181510291 421513 5281589196 1811291151". When inquiring online again, one of his followers, @maxigregrze, deciphers the code as "Okiura Fishery Cold Storage Warehouse," which Ota recognizes as a building in the Harbor Warehouse District. He almost jumps immediately to the search of that building, but his followers convince him to not rashly go in. However, after a week of silence from Iris, and with a direct plea from Kotaro Uchikoshi to find her, Ota determinedly heads off to the Okiura Fishery. He enters the building, live-to-weeting his experience inside. There, he finds an operating table and a saw blade above it, but there's no sign of Iris anywhere. Unable to locate her, Ota begins breaking down online, panicking to find her. And just as he to-weets out, a new video is uploaded to the Lemniscate channel online. The video shows footage of Iris being murdered by a person in a polar bear outfit. Appearance Ota is a 24-year old adult otaku. He has brown hair, which is smooth bangs on the front but spiky from the back, with the majority of his hair covered by his red cap, and his eyes are a pale brown. He wears a long-sleeved light-blue hooded sweater with the word GEEK on the front, and a grey zipper jacket over it, with a circular insignia on the forearms designed with a star over a blue circle with a red outline. His red cap holds a pair of googles on the cap's panels held up by the bills. He wears a black backpack on his back, as well as some sort of mascot-themed waist pack. Personality TBA Gallery Ota Matsushita.jpg|Ota's profile Ota and Mizuki investigating.jpg|Ota and Mizuki finding a body Ota and Iris investigate Marble.jpg|Ota and Iris investigating Marble Memories of Bear fighting Ota.jpg|Ota fighting against Bloody Polar Bear Trivia Etymology * Ota's online nickname, Mato, could have been made similar to A-set's fan name, Tesa, which is simply "A-set" in reverse. In lue of this, Mato could be a reverse of Ota M'atsushita. General * Ota's laptop contains various stickers filled with A-set memorabilia.'Mato: "I think I should get more stickers for my laptop. I've already got it mostly covered in @Lemniscate_Aset stuff but...there's always room for more stickers. Thoughts?" (Mar 2nd) * Ota's Twitter account has contributed just as much, if not more, in world-building for the universe of AI: The Somnium Files as A-set's account, revealing small information and details about the normal life in this world, as well as documenting the events of the story after Iris's death. References Category:Characters Category:Male Characters Category:A-set Characters Category:AI: The Somnium Files Characters